Legal Trial Preparation Checklist

Overview

Provides trial readiness checklists for exhibits, witnesses, motions, openings, closings, logistics, and daily courtroom workflow. This is a descriptive OpenClaw skill for legal-industry workflow support. It provides structured frameworks, checklists, templates, and issue-spotting prompts. It does not execute code, call external APIs, access legal databases, retrieve court records, automate filings, or perform legal services.

When to Use

• Preparing for trial
• Running pretrial readiness checks
• Coordinating courtroom logistics

Target Users

• Trial lawyers
• Paralegals
• Litigation support teams

Inputs to Collect

• Matter or project context, including jurisdiction if known
• Relevant facts, documents, parties, dates, and constraints
• Desired output format, audience, and level of detail
• Known deadlines, risk concerns, or review priorities

Core Modules

1. Trial calendar and milestone checklist — provides structured prompts, checklists, and review fields for this area.
2. Exhibit and witness readiness — provides structured prompts, checklists, and review fields for this area.
3. Motions and orders tracker — provides structured prompts, checklists, and review fields for this area.
4. Courtroom logistics list — provides structured prompts, checklists, and review fields for this area.
5. Daily trial notebook structure — provides structured prompts, checklists, and review fields for this area.

Workflow

1. Confirm the user's legal workflow goal and the relevant practice context.
2. Ask for missing facts, documents, dates, parties, jurisdiction, and audience where needed.
3. Apply the modules below as a structured thinking framework.
4. Produce checklists, templates, matrices, memos, or planning aids tailored to the user's context.
5. Flag uncertainty, verification needs, deadlines, ethics concerns, confidentiality issues, and attorney-review points.

Expected Outputs

• Trial readiness checklist
• Trial notebook outline
• Logistics tracker
• Witness/exhibit status table

Example Prompts

• "Create a 30-day trial preparation checklist."
• "Help me organize a trial notebook for a commercial dispute."

Safety and Legal Limitations

• This skill provides informational workflow support only and is not legal advice.
• It does not create an attorney-client relationship and does not replace review by a qualified attorney.
• Laws, court rules, deadlines, ethics duties, privilege, confidentiality, and professional responsibility rules vary by jurisdiction and matter.
• Users must verify all legal authorities, filing requirements, deadlines, facts, citations, and strategic decisions with qualified counsel.
• The skill must not be used to fabricate evidence, coach false testimony, evade regulation, access data unlawfully, or bypass confidentiality obligations.
• Specific limitation for this skill: Court rules, judge-specific procedures, and evidentiary rulings must be verified by the legal team.

Acceptance Criteria

• Package is descriptive only: no handler.py, scripts, external APIs, network calls, or command execution.
• SKILL.md and README.md are English-first and include an explicit legal-information disclaimer.
• Outputs are frameworks, checklists, templates, or planning aids rather than legal conclusions.
• Includes target users, when-to-use guidance, inputs, workflow, outputs, examples, and safety limitations.
• skill.json contains unique slug, tags, trigger keywords, requires_api=false, and readiness=stable.